Arrange for interviews.  If the person you’re writing about is still living, then arrange for an interview with the subject.   Otherwise, your best sources are likely to be family and friends.  Make sure to brush up on your interviewing skills, since you’ll be trying to acquire intimate information.

Printed materials.  If the person you’re writing about has long passed away, then interviews aren’t going to be your best sources for material, since most of what you’ll likely get are anecdotal.  Instead, you should turn to books and articles previously published about the subject.

Public records.  Official documents kept by the government, schools and other institutions can be great sources for biographies.  Granted, you’ll have to piece things together from tiny bits of detail, but that’s what makes the job of writing biographies such an exciting challenge.

Online sources.  The proliferation of information online will make the job much simpler for many future biographers.   Just imagine how much you can learn about people now by simply sifting through their Facebook and Twitter pages, not to mention the rest of their online presence and activities.

1. Engage the senses.  Appeal to your reader’s senses using visceral descriptions that makes them see, hear, taste and feel various elements in your scene.  Doing so helps put the reader in your fictional universe, making it all the more interesting for them to explore.
2. Pack it with action.  The more dynamic the action in your first three paragraphs are, the more it will be able to engage the reader in your story.  As such, it’s usually a smart idea to start at a middle point where the action begins to thicken, rather than an actual “once upon a time” beginning.
3. Hint at the conflict.  Drop some clues about the impending conflict in the story — just enough to give readers an incentive to read further.   People simply like knowing how a story will proceed and a small clue that hints at that can go a long way.
4. Establish the rules.  You set the tone, narrative style, time frame and other context details in the first three paragraphs.  Putting up the boundaries help the reader make a mental map of how far the story and the characters in it can go.

Here’s a short guide to putting your own ebook together:

1. Define a topic.  Drill down the idea or concept the ebook will be about in one sentence.  This will ensure it is clear and focused.
2. Keep it simple.  This is a free ebook designed for giving away as a way to promote your website.  A simple topic that will interest your target audience is enough — no need to write a post-graduate-level exposition or anything overly complicated.
3. Tie it with your web site.  Whatever topic you choose, make sure it is closely related to the content of your web site.  You don’t want an ebook that appeals to fans of Lost when you’re promoting a website about cellphones.  Make sure there’s a logical overlap between the topics of the two.
4. Outline your topic.  Make sure to divide it into chapters and sections.
5. Use your old content.  If you have old content in your website that fits into the book, don’t hesitate to use it.  You can rewrite, as well, if you want to be more in line with the book’s overall flow.
6. Use available tools.  Use any word processor or desktop publishing software  you currently have.  No need to buy a new one to format an ebook.
7. Use a free PDF Creator.  There are many PDF creators out there, a lot of them available for free.  They’re usually good enough to handle all standard ebook publishing needs.
8. Test the book.  Before offering it to your audience, have several people give the book a look.  Gather any comments and tweak as you see fit.

Take note: it’s your own words.  That means, you do considerably more than merely replacing synonyms and rearranging sentences.  To ensure you do this without plagiarizing, set the original work aside and try to explain the idea off the top of your head.

Paraphrasing can work in some instances and be absolutely wrong in others.  Here are the situations where doing it can prove to be a good resort:

1. When you want to promote an author’s idea, but their work is either written poorly or in an antiquated manner.  This will happen a lot when you’re drawing passages from impromptu speeches or old materials.
2. When a quote isn’t special enough to insert on its own.  Some quotes do convey brilliant thoughts, but are just a bad fit for your own work.
3. When you want to support a particular point and a specific part of a material is especially relevant to it.
4. When you want to present an author’s point of view that is different from your own, so you can refute it.
5. When you want to present information that can be taken as fact.
6. When you want to comment on an idea or an example that an author uses.

As with all writing, your paraphrases should be written with the help of an English grammar checker.  If you’re going to let mistakes slip through, after all, you may as well just quote it.

Why?  Because unless otherwise stated, readers will assume that anything written on a paper with your name on it is the product of your own thinking.  When they quote from it, they will point to you as the source.

More importantly, though, knowing where a specific idea originated will show the reader your starting position.   That allows them to verify it, setting the context from where your own thoughts and research have been formulated.

As such, the only time attribution can be skipped is when you’re writing about ideas that are common knowledge.  For instance, there’s no reason to attribute a discussion of the general theories of relativity to Einstein for most types of writing.  If you’re producing a book for seven year olds, however, who may not have heard of the same thing, then including a passing mention should be in order.

Even small references that add color should be given their due.   While it is tempting to leave attribution out (since a particular point doesn’t affect your arguments), doing so can damage your credibility, taking away from all the work you’ve put researching, formulating and writing the piece to the best of your abilities.  Yep, all that money spent on the best grammar software gone to waste.

1. Keep your working time sacred. Do what you can to protect your working hours. No one else is interested in giving you time to work except yourself. If you let other things take that time away, you’ve lost it forever.

2. Be willing to adapt. If what you’re doing isn’t working, don’t be afraid to try something new. Just remember not to deviate too far from your existing process. Tweaking just enough to realize some improvements is what you should aim for, not completely overhauling the way you work.

3. Be proactive. Got time to write now? Do it. For longer works, the more days you procrastinate, the shorter your window to finish gets. Strive to get as much done as soon as possible.

4. Set reasonable priorities. Your work is important. However, so is your life beyond it. Many writers fail in longer-term ventures because they fail to take into account that other things in their lives – like their families – can take precedence over their writing. Be reasonable.

5. Use a working journal. Since you’ll be writing a while, keeping a journal can show how your different habits and behavior can affect the way you work. You’ll turn up many surprises this way. I have one friend who found out, for instance, that skipping coffee in the morning actually improved her productivity.

6. Get help. Most people will struggle to finish a long piece of writing on their own. Find a way to get feedback from others, either by forming a study group or joining writers’ forums online. You can also pay professionals to look at your work (if you have the budget) or use one of those advanced writing software as a feedback mechanism for the early stages.

While it’s restricted largely to describing, explaining and understanding empirical concepts, writing in psychology embraces many of the same principles used in other writing endeavors. In fact, your all-purpose writing software should handily serve you here just as well. However, the field does have its own guidelines about what works and what doesn’t when producing written documents.

As with any professional field, it pays to follow them if you want to gain the best results:

1. Use plain language. Psychology writing is based on formal scientific writing, so keep everything straightforward and on to the point. Forget literary devices – they’re not only inappropriate, they’re downright useless.

2. Rely on evidence. Since psychology is an empirical science, your arguments and claims will need to follow logical thought that stems directly from evidence drawn from experiments and observation.

3. Describe clear connections among your evidence, theories and eventual conclusions. The reasoning that follows your evidence should be completely sound and written with utmost clarity, lest risk having your ideas fall by the wayside.

4. Follow APA style standards. The American Psychological Association (APA) publishes standards on proper format for psychology material. Unless otherwise instructed by your teacher, editor or publication, always use it as your guideline.

Regardless of what kind of writing you’re doing, as long as it’s intended for viewing by an audience, there likely has to be a point. This is especially true for professional and academic pieces, which are frequently produced for an express purpose. What are you claiming in your piece? What insinuations are you attempting to make? What aspects of the topic are you looking to address?

When you write a piece about a government office, for instance, your point is not “to detail what the office does.” That’s your topic. Your point, instead, could be “to prove that it is the best office in the world,” “to expose the corrupt practices inside the organization” or “to demonstrate how vital its functions are to government.”

In written works, it’s always best to make your point right on the opening paragraph. That way, the reader isn’t confused about what you’re going to talk about. If they find it intriguing, they will read on; if it’s not quite compelling to them, they can move on. Either way, your point is clear. There’s no way you can mislead your readers this way.

A good point says something significant about your topic – one that can help both you and your readers understand it better. Most of the time, this is best accomplished by writing about something that isn’t in plain sight, an aspect of your subject that can only be found by digging deeper. Unfortunately, even the best writing software can’t help you here; it will fix up your grammar to a shiny polish, but you’ll have to supply the rest all on your own.

If you wish to write travel guidebooks today, it’s a good idea to steer clear of the common markets (i.e. countries and large cities), since those are dominated by big names such as Frommers and Lonely Planet.  A potential focus, if you want to succeed, are smaller, regional markets, especially those still on the verge of emerging as popular tourist destinations.

Fact is, nobody writes about a lot of places that don’t regularly get featured in travel magazines.  If you have some decent writing skills (plus a good proofreading software) and spare time to get acquainted with the area, you can probably produce a useful guidebook for it.

Like other guidebooks, you will want to get into the essential hotspots in the particular location you’re writing about.  Since it’s not as popular as most locales that are written about, you’ll have to be very creative when finding areas of interest, making it particularly challenging.  On the flipside, however, its relative “newness” gives you free reign to design your guidebook the way you see fit.

One area to look towards is self-publishing, especially if interest in that particular market isn’t all that great to begin with.  Provided you have the necessary entrepreneurial skills (including some marketing wits and chutzpah), you might be able to pull out a decent income from it.

In fact, you will notice this same feature as a default facility in many fiction writing software, where it is treated as an important (albeit, optional) part of the process.  Every novel uses a different formula, each with its own process and structure.  Obviously, it will depend a lot on the writer, although numerous things can also prove a factor, including the novel’s genre and the overall impressions you wish to create.

Here’s a sample structure that was used in the process of writing a recent medical thriller.

1. The main protagonist is an expert.
2. The chief villain is also an expert.
3. All evil actions are viewed with the main villain in the scene.
4. The main protagonist is aided by a capable team behind him.
5. A romantic involvement between at least one couple on the protagonist’s team should take place.
6. Two or more of the protagonist’s team must die.
7. All deaths should be viewed from the vantage point of either the protagonist or one of the characters in the team.
8. If, at any point, you feel stuck, kill someone.

From such a formula, you can produce what is pretty much a wide body of prose.  Just throw in different characters, fresh conflicts and new plots, all while carefully sticking to the outlined structure.

If you’re having a hard time figuring out how you want to lay your work of fiction out, it’s a good idea to read through your favorite novel, using it as a model for putting together your own.  Work to drill down the entire work as a simple formula as above and use it to successfully fashion your piece.